Gutierrez-Perez publishes on Pulse Nightclub in national journals

Dr. Robert Gutierrez-Perez recently published “A Journey to El Mundo Zurdo: Queer Temporality, Queer of Color Cultural Heritages” in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (one of the main and highly competitive journals sponsored by the National Communication Association). Responding to the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, this essay fuses scholarly writing with poetry and personal narrative to discuss queer temporality and the cultural inheritances of queer people of color. By connecting the events of Pulse nightclub with prior acts of violence against queer people of color, Gutierrez-Perez argues that the experiences and culture of queer people of color are a (post)colonial construct that is tentative, personal/political, and dangerous.

Gutierrez-Perez has continued this work and has also published in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking as part of a special forum on queer autoethnography, “Bridging Performances of Auto/ethnography and Queer Bodies of Color to Advocacy and Civic Engagement.” In this piece, he argues that research by marginalized communities is often dangerous work as their performances of everyday life are often violently silenced, policed, and oppressed. Meaning that queer of color auto/ethnography is intimately connected to advocacy and civic engagement. Utilizing the trauma of the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida as a focal point, this poetic/research essay moves from the personal to the political and back to demand that the reader remember those lost during this horrific moment in history and to advocate for those still alive and fighting on the front lines of multiple battlegrounds for social justice.